X PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 



been fouuclecl, and Wanvicksliire has thus the great honour of 

 being the birthplace of Enghsli Botany, if not of that science 

 itself under its modern aspect. I fear we have not much to 

 show by way of memorial of his connection with our county. 

 None of his Natural History works arc, to my knowledge, in our 

 libraries. Wc should endeavour to place them there. We have, 

 however, the great and living monument raised by the Ray 

 Society to his fame. 



Tournefort, the eminent Botanist, was Ray's contem- 

 porary, and acknowledged the correctness of his views somewhat 

 unreadily. The next great master was Linnaeus, who failed 

 to appreciate the importance of Ray's divisions of the vegetable 

 kingdom. His o^Vll ingenious but purely artificial system has 

 not survived. It was founded upon the arrangement of the parts 

 of the flowers only, and consequently plants were brought into 

 strange companionships. Ray, on the other hand, considered that 

 every part of the plant — root, stem, leaves, and flowers — should 

 be considered in natural grouping. The principal gift of Linnaeus 

 to Botany was the establishment of the genera upon a scientific 

 basis. His introduction of the binary nomenclature was of the 

 greatest value in bringing about a clear and systematic method 

 for the distinction and arrangement not only of plants but of 

 every class of living organisms, By it there was no occasion 

 for Brasslca prima, secmida, or }>rassicii flure croceo, but Jirassica 

 being the family or generic name, Brassica (dim, nvira, mumlis, 

 &c., were the names given to the species. 



Bernard de Jussieu arranged the genera of Linnfeus into 

 natural orders under the primary divisions of Ray. In 1827, 

 Robert Brown discovered the direct action of the pollen tube 

 upon the uncovered ovule of Conifers and Cycads, thereby 

 afl'ording a sure basis for the sub-division of Dicotyledons into 

 two groups, Angiosperms and Gymnosperms, and in his various 

 works he so greatly improved upon Jussieu's orders, that these 

 two Naturalists stand first as the expositors of the natural orders 

 of plants. Their classification, modified by the De CandoUes, 

 is usually adopted in this country and in America. In Germany 



